Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

6. Withnail and I -- This film surprised me as I was completely unprepared for its premise and picked it due to its poster because it was drawn by Ralph Steadman. Later, I learned that it was one of my best friend's favorite films and wondered how I missed it. Bruce Robinson based it on his life in London in the 1960s, and it follows the lives of two struggling actors,  the manic Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the more sedate Marwood (Paul McGann)  who take a disastrous holiday to Withnail's Uncle Monty's (Richard Griffiths) cottage. The two men cope the best they can in their daily farcical struggles for alcohol and drugs, running into strange characters and stranger situations. The film is dark, yet laugh-out-loud funny at times. 5. My Winnipeg -- My favorite film for purely visual, surrealistic inspiration. Complete with reimaginings of hockey teams and horse heads which appear near the Red River, Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg is a stunning pseudo-history, what he...

12. The Witch -- Out of the many horror films I watched this year, The Witch was one of the newer ones that really stuck with me. Robert Egger's period piece set in the 17th century New England ably captures the struggles of a Puritan family, while showing how fear and prejudice are a continual problem in human communities. 11. Cutter's Way -- Jeff Bridges, in the role of Richard Bone, seems to be working on his template for the character that will later become the Dude in The Big Lebowski . He finds amazing onscreen chemistry with John Heard's Alex Cutter in this charming, little thriller that sends Cutter and Bones on the trail of a mystery. Ivan Passer's film is not flashy, but it carries a lot of depth through weighty performances and characterization. 10. Mona Lisa -- Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa is not just another character-driven crime film because the story and acting elevate it to another level. The performances by Bob Hoskins and Cathy Tyson are ste...

17. Mur Murs -- Agnes Varda's documentary concerning the mural painters in Los Angeles in the 1970s is a visual joy to behold. She takes an esoteric subject and instills it with beauty and color that many might miss by not just exploring the murals but their creators. 16. Stalker -- Andrei Tarkovsky's film is a very different matter. It portrays the drab palette of a soviet landscape, mixing it with science fiction, and telling the story of a "stalker" who guides people to a forbidden zone in search of room filled with anything they might desire. On its surface, the film could seem dull and long to those only familiar with Hollywood blockbusters and short attention span theater, yet the characterization and performances make this film as great as critics rate it. 15. Limelight -- In one of his last films, Charlie Chaplin portrays a famous stage clown past his prime who has become a hopeless drunk. The film tracks his redemption as he puts on one of the last ...

22. Three Colours: Blue -- It was hard to choose a favorite from the Three Colours Trilogy because each of these films was masterfully shot, the writing and acting was phenomenal, and Krystof  Kieślowski's directing was breath taking. The first entry in the trilogy, Blue is also the saddest, depicting a young woman's struggle to live in isolation after the death of her husband and child. Juliette Binoche brings Julie to life and adeptly depicts her struggles. The trilogy's themes are those of the French Revolutionary Ideals.  The film's subject is liberty, and it shows the difficulty of achieving freedom and autonomy, yet it also shows how connections  with others can be freeing.  21. On the Bowery -- One of the more thematically interesting films that I watched last year. On the Bowery is a biopic of the early days of New York City's Bowery. The director, Lionel Rogosin, hired actual Bowery inhabitants and shot it in that section of the city. It tells a st...

 Since I watched 365 films, I decided to delve into the best films I watched in 2017. 25. Rollerball Norman Jewison's Rollerball is fun to watch, and its portrayal of a man expressing his individuality in a society that threatens to completely control him is apt even in today's world. The sport of Murderball is brutal and when the executives continually change the rules, he struggles to maintain. Yet he manages to succeed, despite the fact that he will possibly ultimately fail. The sport is interesting, if a bit unrealistic, and the performances, especially that of James Caan, take the story beyond its generic science fiction trappings. 24. Jules and Jim Truffaut was one of my favorite directors this year, so it was hard to narrow down which films I wanted to put on this list. I picked Jules and Jim because I felt adversarial about it and had to think about the story and cinematography to really understand its value. The film's romantic love triangle is hard to w...